Academic links our tertiary education system to Nazis and the holocaust

The Productivity Commission is two months away from delivering its draft report on the future of higher education in New Zealand. Its inquiry into new models of tertiary education aims to find ways of achieving better economic outcomes from New Zealand’s investment in the sector. This should be put into the context of ambitions to turn the ‘education industry’ into a million-dollar enterprise – but there is also a larger context.

Environmentalist David Orr says education systems are how we shape future generations to think about the world. Sadly, education per se is no guarantee of decency, prudence, or wisdom. As Orr points out, the destruction of the natural world to date has not been the work of ignorant people. It has been, largely, the result of the work of educated people. What kind of education do we need?

There are dots to be joined here. Donald Trump in the United States, xenophobia in Europe, the brutality of detention centres in Australia – these are the end result of an authoritarianism that will not tolerate dissent. We see the same thing in corporate malfeasance and government corruption. And now we can see it shaping education.

Meaningful education entails critique, reflexivity and conversation; when education is cast in terms of the management of provision and performance, it is rendered meaningless. As our education becomes more managed, more ‘effective’ in economic terms, it offers less and less of a barrier to barbarity. Today my students want to be efficient consumers and they want me to be an efficient courier. Under the pressure of productivity, education is turned into making sure the vending machine always works.

Up until this point it is the pretty standard rant against tertiary education management. But then he goes on and jumps the shark:

In her famous book about Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, political philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the term ‘banality of evil’ to describe the tendency of people to obey orders without critical evaluation. She pointed out that Eichmann did not want to think about the nature of his work – he just wanted to get on with the job and his job was organising transport. And as we know, he was very efficient. We know, because the forms were properly filled and the process was well-audited. Job done.

Education is a constant struggle against the banality of evil. To educate is to insist on thinking. It cultivates the capacity to contest. While it seems unthinkable that horrors such as the holocaust could ever take root here in New Zealand, it was also unthinkable in Germany in the 1930s. If we are going to fashion higher education policy here today along the fault lines identified by Wiesel in Germany preceding World War II, then perhaps it is not as unthinkable as we think.

So our tertiary education system is “evil” and may lead to New Zealand turning into Nazi Germany.

I despair that this is the level of argument a senior academic resorts to. It is also deeply deeply insulting to those who were affected by the Holocaust.

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Comments (52)

Liberal Minded Kiwi

These are the same lazy as academics who support “safe spaces” and are relentless SJWs opposing free speech on our campuses, while appeasing militant lefties, vegans and other snowflakes. Don’t they see the irony there?

burt

if is also deeply deeply insulting to those who were effected by the Holocaust

He wouldn’t dare be that offensive to Muslims, perhaps anybody insulted by anything should resort to chopping people’s heads off of blowing up large numbers of people to show how important peace and tolerance is ?

waikatogirl

mikenmild

I’m not so sure this is that outrageous. It points to an extreme outcome from the kind of educational approach that Dr Ruth disparages. But I’m not sure that message will get past the knee-jerk reaction of: “Oh, he says tertiary education is just like the Holocaust”.
Never mind, EAD will be along to tell us that there could be no cause for offence, as the Holocaust didn’t happen anyway.

Mobile Michael

“There are dots to be joined here.” Translation: I have no evidence so will use a wild conspiracy theory. Pure academic laziness and Dr Damian Ruth would fail any student who wrote that in a paper handed in for marking.

bushbasher

Reductio ad Hitlerum cannot be used in this case. It is universally accepted that you can only play the Hitler card if invading Poland or mass genocide. The article website can be commented on directly…

mikenmild

But even if you ignore the overly dramatic Nazi stuff at the end, the first part of the quote is bad enough just on its own.

Rough translation:

It is so frustrating that students these days don’t think like me! Tertiary education should be about teaching students to have the same values as me – we should be teaching them WHAT to think, not how to think. This is vitally important because people who think like me are our only defense against the country turning into a barbaric nation.”

burt

Zapper

“Donald Trump in the United States, xenophobia in Europe, the brutality of detention centres in Australia – these are the end result of an authoritarianism that will not tolerate dissent.”

Now I’m not a Senior Lecturer in Management, so maybe that’s why my brain can’t make this leap. These 3 different examples are not even closely related. You could say Donald Trump is the opposite of what he states. Who are the dissenters in his argument that have been eliminated?

Perhaps he means Islam? Islam does not tolerate dissent and being enabled by Western society to behave in that way perhaps has given rise to the likes of Trump and so-called “xenophobia”? If that’s his argument then I can see his point, even if he was unable to flesh it out.

Dennis Horne

tvb

How Damian Ruth got a PhD with this sort of argument beats me. Once you bring Hitler into it you have lost the argument. It is called reducio ad Hitlerum and only the dim witted do it. Its is called Godwin’s law.

Nukuleka

Whilst I agree with your viewpoint, DPF, I have reservations about your final statement that this article is ‘deeply insulting’ to those affected by the Holocaust. This is the type of high moralising tone adopted by the politically correct to shut down any argument or point of view with which we disagree. The man has every right to express his loopy point of view, no matter how much others may be deeply insulted or offended! Let his words condemn him for the nutjob that he is.

A public service translation for those who do not understand Leftist NewSpeak.

“Environmentalist David Orr says education systems are how we shape future generations to think about the world. ”

Translation: Education systems are how the Left molests innocent minds to turn them into Leftists.

“Meaningful education entails critique, reflexivity and conversation”

Translation: Leftist education entails only critique of the Right, the West, and dead white males. It is reflexivly anti-European. It’s coversation is only with Left. No real coversation with the Right is tolerated.

“There are dots to be joined here.”

Translation: There are no dots to be joined here, but I need an excuse to rant against Trump and Brexit.

“Education is a constant struggle against the banality of evil.”

Translation: Leftist education is a constant struggle against all that is good in the West, so that the banality of Leftist evil may prevail.

Dennis Horne

Inandout

These university types actually get handsomely paid to ponder and theorise, and to non academics like most of us, it would be akin to spending one’s holidays squatting on a lonely beach and waiting for a eureka moment.

“I despair that this is the level of argument a senior academic resorts to. It is also deeply deeply insulting to those who were affected by the Holocaust.”

Well, David, if you think that’s bad then maybe you better not look at Dr Jarrod Gilbert’s latest opinion piece. Basically this taxpayer funded “academic” is advocating for the establishment of thoughtcrime law straight out of Orwell’s big brother.

Satantango

@mikenmild

I’m not so sure this is that outrageous.

Yes it is. I understand your desire to always be akin the prevailing tide, but comparing present day tertiary education to Nazism and the Holocaust, explicitly,and deliberately, is indeed outrageous. It is also attention-seeking. Clearly designed to draw attention to the author himself by using such inflammatory language, it is like a three-year old in their cot yelling, “poo, poo”.

Short Shriveled and Slightly to the Left

It is also deeply deeply insulting to those who were affected by the Holocaust.

Which “Holocaust” are you referring to?

I know a lot here disagree – but I will repeat what I believe the true narrative is for this period of history which contradicts most of what the history books at school say. I’ve reached my conclusions after years of research from a wide variety of sources to reach what I believe is the truth.

Hitler, as hundreds of kings and potentates had before him, simply wanted the country he governed – Germany (and subsequently, the German sphere of influence) – free from “the Jews” in the collective sense. That he did so is quite understandable, considering the preponderant Jewish role in the communist revolutions which knocked Germany out of the war and subjected her to the slavery of Versailles, not to mention the subsequent corruption of culture in the Weimar Republic and their known rapacity for financial predation and manipulation.

So he proposed a humane method of what used to be outright expulsion by encouraging the Jews to emigrate outside of Europe. He did not order all Jews expelled. For example, in order to reduce the Jewish influence on education, he would have Jewish professors retired and pensioned. He even made provisions to give preferential treatment to Jews who had won the Iron Cross.

The sufferings of the Jews were contemporaneous with the sufferings of tens of millions more Christians. Suffering is a direct consequence of war. To give special victim status to the Jews – who were never put into gas chambers or murdered en masse merely for being Jewish- is an insult to all the victims of the Second World War.

The reason I keep banging this drum is because Europe must awaken to this fact and drop the self-effacing and masochistic mea culpas otherwise it’s “leaders” will ensure the European people suffer a real “final solution” as they are swamped by the never ending tide of Islam and Negroids the leaders are so keen on bringing on replacing the natives with.

burt

Dennis Horne

Oh, hang on. Sorry I forgot. Humans are so smart and so important that;

a) They are in control of everything including the climate.
b) We understand our climate so well we’ve been able to simplify the science so much we can just use CO2 as a single factor to manage and control the entire climate system.

Lance

HMM. Lets put this into the context that I consider he is saying.
Over the last year or two we have had DPF slating many times the attitude of various groups demanding that universities etc shut down or change other peoples opinions about various subjects and we have in NZ just that applied to us white males.
ust this morning I watched Christine Rankin (who was subject to just this treatment by the left and its stooges, one in particular who was her ultimate employer but was propped up for another 8 years by this Govt. till he retired), talking about the PC speak in the Families commission and how they were not allowed to talk about Maori and child abuse.

That is the inevitable result of just what this man is saying.
That places like Universities no longer teach people to question or think for themselves but just do as we say. Especially Government funded ones.

That was the prevailing attitude of the Nazi’s and his point was that it’s really not acceptable to “do as you are commanded” and that was born out in the Nuremberg Trails where those that committed the deed upon others especially the Jewish people could not claim immunity from those deeds by using the reason “they had orders”.

More thought is needed by many for without questioning and decision and protest if necessary we would soon become a “Muldoon” state. NZ the way I want it.

NZ is lucky in that context although lately we have had a lot of unwanted laws and other Government instruments (both National and Local), forced upon us with actually very little consultation with NZers. Witness the referendum results. The only amazing thing about that last one is that so far it has been shelved not ignored as have the others before this one.. Using a 3 year “mandate” to carry out all this smacks right at the very notion of Democracy.

So I actually think many of you should engage your brains and do a little learning and thinking before you try to shut down the mans point of view.
Which of course is exactly his point.

I’m not so sure this is that outrageous. It points to an extreme outcome from the kind of educational approach that Dr Ruth disparages. But I’m not sure that message will get past the knee-jerk reaction of: “Oh, he says tertiary education is just like the Holocaust”.

tom hunter

EAD (3,895 comments) says:
July 27th, 2016 at 8:41 am
…
The reason I keep banging this drum is because ….

… you’re a primitive White Supremacist with deluded theories of racial superiority and a victim complex.

Which is ironic considering that’s what your claiming about “Europeans”: that Holocaust guilt is making them victims and preventing them from standing up and fighting for themselves and their culture. And of course this argument enables you to then devolve to your favourite subject – the Jews who supposedly drive all this.

It’s a lot more complex of course, but you’re a very simple man. I’d normally label you repugnant and repulsive, but I think those terms are better suited to people who actually carry out vile acts. You’re just pathetic.

tom hunter

Dr Ruth could have made exactly the same point by talking about Communism’s effect on universities. There is no better example than that of Lysenkoism, which completely screwed up plant breeding and genetic research in the USSR, because Lysenko had the backing of Stalin. Far more appropriate in this context.

But Dr Ruth went for the Nazi analogy instead, despite being a supposed academic, with an academic’s habit of chosing words carefully. As a result her message is getting drowned out, which is surely something a “smart” person would want to avoid in order to make her real point.

I have no sympathy: her mind automatically “went there”, to the Nazis, rather than to the Communists of Stalin’s time.

Kiwi Dave

Possibly there’s a reasonable argument behind the excessive generalizations and over-the-top Hitler comparison: purely instrumental education which trains people in skills without considering the ends to which those skills will be put is an incomplete education.

Unfortunately, the author provides little evidence that this is currently a problem; none of the three dots he chooses to join are convincing evidence of dangerous authoritarianism – indeed, two of the three dots are reactions to elitist governments’ authoritarian contempt for or indifference to their own societies and the other dot, Australia’s detention camps, has helped stop economic migrants drowning themselves in large numbers.

stephieboy

BarryB

Well I recall few years ago that Waikato University shut down or banned someone because they questioned the Holocaust.

Now Universities are supposed to be the cradle of free thinking and expression. Thats how new ideas and products and systems get born. My background is scientific and most of the worlds important scientific developments happened because someone was thinking a bit different or trying a different approach – and many of these were ideas and thoughts that had until this time thought to be totally wrong.

Now I have no doubt that the holocaust as most of us know it did occur – but to be honest beside the horrors of what Stalin did to his own people – somewhere between 20 and 25 million Russians in total – died. only 5% of the russians soldiers who started the war survived, I think it was 5 million were starved to death in the Ukraine during the war by Krushchev.
God knows how many Stalin simply had shot because he thought it time to clean out the ranks.
Then China had 20 million deaths during WW2.

I would venture to say that the Holocaust was just one of the big death programmes during WW2.
This is one researchers table of deaths in germany only.:
Ukrainians 5.5 – 7 million
Jews (of all countries) 6 million +
Russian POWs 3.3 million +
Russian Civilians 2 million +
Poles 3 million +
Yugoslavians 1.5 million +
Gypsies 200,000 – 500,000
Mentally/Physically Disabled 70,000- 250,000
Homosexuals Tens of thousands
Spanish Republicans Tens of thousands
Jehovah’s Witnesses 2,500 – 5,000

So when someone questions the significance of the holocaust they have good reason – it wasnt the biggest disaster during WW2 – yet Waikato University wasnt going have the truth get in the road of PC.

Yeah, the guy Godwined his own article. That said, the only reason for having a “Productivity Commission” make recommendations about university education is that the government would like to subordinate the university system to the economic interests of the state – if Damian Ruth finds that altogether too much “just like the Nazis!!!!”, his over-reaction is forgivable. It certainly is pretty obnoxious.

mikenmild

BarryB
I see you are a fan of ‘not as bad as’. Focus on the Holocaust does not deny or diminish other genocidal campaigns. Attention to these other crimes is not lacking. The holocaust contained some unique features which make it particularly notable, however.

The academic you refer to was Joel Hayward, who wrote a Master’s thesis at Canterbury University which repeated a number of common Holocaust-denying tropes. A review found the work, and its supervision, to be seriously flawed, and Hayward himself accepted that he had got it completely wrong.

However whether one believes in the Holocaust or not should not be subject to censorship or made a thought crime .Though I think those in an academic setting have the onus of providing cogent evidence and facts to support their claims .

Grover Furr is an example of a Stalin apologist who like the Holocaust deniers minimises or denies Stalin’s crimes. He is a professor of medieval English (read: not History) at Montclair State University,

I have reservations about your final statement that this article is ‘deeply insulting’ to those affected by the Holocaust. This is the type of high moralising tone adopted by the politically correct to shut down any argument or point of view with which we disagree.

THANK YOU!

This thought has been troubling me. But I would not have said it so well.

Scott Hamilton

I’m pleased you’re a scientist an not a historian Barry, because your view of the past seems a bit misty.

‘Well I recall few years ago that Waikato University shut down or banned someone because they questioned the Holocaust.’

The controversy at Waikato concerned a student who ha written a thesis about NZ’s best-known neo-Nazi, Kerry Bolton. Bolton tried to get the thesis removed from display in the university library, but was ultimately unsuccessful in doing this.

‘I think it was 5 million were starved to death in the Ukraine during the war by Krushchev.’

You’ve mixed up the famine that Stalin created for the Ukrainians in the early ’30s with World War Two and with the post-Stalin Krushchev era.

‘I would venture to say that the Holocaust was just one of the big death programmes during WW2’

The Holocaust was qualitatively different to, say, the starvation of Soviet prisoners by the Nazis or the nuke strikes on Japan because it was a systematic attempt to destroy two entire peoples, the Jews and the Romany. That’s why we call it a genocide. And it was unique in the history of genocides because of its scale.

Where is ‘evil’? The banality of evil is just a term used to describe the efficient industrial scale extermination of people and how the practitioners can ignore the consequence of their activity by concentrating on their own little module in the operation. There are any number of modern day activities carried out in the West which could be labelled ‘evil’, but could more properly be described as institutional or systematic indifference.

The amorality of increasing efficient outcomes for returns on investment should be the subject of scrutiny.

I don’t see the outrageous part, the Nazis were being used as an example of how perfecting efficiency and productivity isn’t necessarily virtuous in itself and could lead to disastrous outcomes.

Truly outrageous would be pursuing gains in efficiency and productivity without concern for the predictable consequences of that pursuit, especially when we have historical examples of the human suffering such unthinking blundering forth has caused.

Note to Productivity Commission. The Social science hysterics in Universities are not just valueless, they are destructive.
Close down departments which are socially or politically motivated , gender based, marxist, rune stones, progressive, activist.
Closed.